12-22-2009, 01:58 PM
Torchlight
Now with Steam Cloud support and achievements, I think this is a pretty excellent dungeon crawler for the money. I picked it up this weekend on sale for $10, and will start on it part-time as I work through Dragon Age. Even at the full price of $20, if you are looking for a fun way to kill some time I highly recommend it.
I found a great overall summary on EJ that led to me having this game on my short list. I did play through the whole demo as a Destroyer, and found the sort of cartoonish-Diablo atmosphere to be really pleasant. Here is the review:
Game: Torchlight
Developer: Runic Games
Originally Posted by Wikipedia :
Welcome to Torchlight, a dungeon crawling game for beginner to veteran crawlers. Torchlight keeps things simple but fresh, recycling a lot of the good from staple crawlers like Diablo while adding a lot of new elements alongside Runic's take on the artwork. Developers/artists from Diablo, Fate, and Mythos contributed to this game, so there is definitely some talent at work here. There's a lot to say about this game, but likely if you open any review for the game you will be met with mostly glowing praise.
The game is single player for the time being , but that's not to say you will really be playing alone: you have a loyal dog/cat to come with you, who has his own separate inventory and will do anything from cast spells, to kind-of-tanking as well as ferrying loot back to town to sell for you while you keep plodding through the dungeons! Multiplayer will take the form of an MMO, that isn't set for release until early 2011.
Torchlight is built on the foundation of a single main dungeon, an infinite amount of side dungeons called the Lost Dungeons (accessed via scrolls of Lost Map teleporting at the shops, as well as one additional quest npc with his own sequence of side dungeons), and once you finish the game: an "infinite" dungeon called the Shadow Vaults.
Loot is done pretty much the same as Diablo. You have various degrees of colored quality (white/blue/yellow or common/rare/unique respectively) alongside purple set items that give you additional perks as you wear more pieces of the set. Items have a chance to have sockets, in which you can place gems. There is a transmuter available for building special items (recipes TBD) as well as creating better quality gems. Also available is an enchanter who will take your gold and attempt to place additional special statistics on your items, increasing its DPS or other secondary effects at the risk of potentially wiping your weapon clean of enchantments.
There are three main classes to Torchlight: Destroyer, Alchemist, and Vanquisher. Each class is able to do melee/magic/range, although the archetypes tend to focus a theme around one in particular. This doesn't mean you need to stick to such a theme, as each class has 3 skill sets for you to utilize. As each skill set does not have any prequisites for skills other than level, you can pick/match any skill from each set to build yourself however you want. You can also dump additional skill points into existing skills to further strengthen them (up to 10 points per skill). Class trailers:
YouTube - Destroyer Trailer: torchlight destroyer trailer 1080p
YouTube - Alchemist Trailer: Torchlight Alchemist Trailer
YouTube - Vanquisher Trailer: Torchlight Vanquisher Trailer
The game also boasts moddable elements. The map/asset editor tools will be out shortly, but mods for the core game itself are already coming out. Respec potions have been modded into the game, and plans for new artwork/skills/difficulty balancing are already in the works on the Relic forums. I'd say the chances of a rich mod community are high at this point, especially considering how popular this game has become in the span of days.
So you want to try Torchlight but not buy it? Well, the game is actually only 20 bucks, which is practically a steal. However, there IS a demo available on Steam. The best part about the demo is that it is essentially the full game, except you have a limited amount of time (per character I believe) to mess around, essentially classic shareware. Regardless, you are able to try out all the classes and see the game pretty much the same way everyone did in the first few hours.
Torchlight Demo on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/41510/
And on that note, videos!
YouTube - Torchlight Launch Trailer: Torchlight Launch Trailer
Runic Games Video Page: http://www.youtube.com/user/runicgames
YouTube - Torchlight Official Game Trailer for PC [HD]: Torchlight official game trailer for PC [HD]
Now with Steam Cloud support and achievements, I think this is a pretty excellent dungeon crawler for the money. I picked it up this weekend on sale for $10, and will start on it part-time as I work through Dragon Age. Even at the full price of $20, if you are looking for a fun way to kill some time I highly recommend it.
I found a great overall summary on EJ that led to me having this game on my short list. I did play through the whole demo as a Destroyer, and found the sort of cartoonish-Diablo atmosphere to be really pleasant. Here is the review:
Game: Torchlight
Developer: Runic Games
Originally Posted by Wikipedia :
Quote:Torchlight is an action role-playing game developed by Runic Games, published by Encore, Inc., and released for Windows in October 2009. A port for Mac OS X will be released subsequent to the Windows version. The fantasy-themed game is set in the fictional town of Torchlight and the expansive caverns and dungeons nearby, which adventurers explore to collect valuable loot and battle hordes of monsters.
Welcome to Torchlight, a dungeon crawling game for beginner to veteran crawlers. Torchlight keeps things simple but fresh, recycling a lot of the good from staple crawlers like Diablo while adding a lot of new elements alongside Runic's take on the artwork. Developers/artists from Diablo, Fate, and Mythos contributed to this game, so there is definitely some talent at work here. There's a lot to say about this game, but likely if you open any review for the game you will be met with mostly glowing praise.
The game is single player for the time being , but that's not to say you will really be playing alone: you have a loyal dog/cat to come with you, who has his own separate inventory and will do anything from cast spells, to kind-of-tanking as well as ferrying loot back to town to sell for you while you keep plodding through the dungeons! Multiplayer will take the form of an MMO, that isn't set for release until early 2011.
Torchlight is built on the foundation of a single main dungeon, an infinite amount of side dungeons called the Lost Dungeons (accessed via scrolls of Lost Map teleporting at the shops, as well as one additional quest npc with his own sequence of side dungeons), and once you finish the game: an "infinite" dungeon called the Shadow Vaults.
Loot is done pretty much the same as Diablo. You have various degrees of colored quality (white/blue/yellow or common/rare/unique respectively) alongside purple set items that give you additional perks as you wear more pieces of the set. Items have a chance to have sockets, in which you can place gems. There is a transmuter available for building special items (recipes TBD) as well as creating better quality gems. Also available is an enchanter who will take your gold and attempt to place additional special statistics on your items, increasing its DPS or other secondary effects at the risk of potentially wiping your weapon clean of enchantments.
There are three main classes to Torchlight: Destroyer, Alchemist, and Vanquisher. Each class is able to do melee/magic/range, although the archetypes tend to focus a theme around one in particular. This doesn't mean you need to stick to such a theme, as each class has 3 skill sets for you to utilize. As each skill set does not have any prequisites for skills other than level, you can pick/match any skill from each set to build yourself however you want. You can also dump additional skill points into existing skills to further strengthen them (up to 10 points per skill). Class trailers:
YouTube - Destroyer Trailer: torchlight destroyer trailer 1080p
YouTube - Alchemist Trailer: Torchlight Alchemist Trailer
YouTube - Vanquisher Trailer: Torchlight Vanquisher Trailer
The game also boasts moddable elements. The map/asset editor tools will be out shortly, but mods for the core game itself are already coming out. Respec potions have been modded into the game, and plans for new artwork/skills/difficulty balancing are already in the works on the Relic forums. I'd say the chances of a rich mod community are high at this point, especially considering how popular this game has become in the span of days.
So you want to try Torchlight but not buy it? Well, the game is actually only 20 bucks, which is practically a steal. However, there IS a demo available on Steam. The best part about the demo is that it is essentially the full game, except you have a limited amount of time (per character I believe) to mess around, essentially classic shareware. Regardless, you are able to try out all the classes and see the game pretty much the same way everyone did in the first few hours.
Torchlight Demo on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/41510/
And on that note, videos!
YouTube - Torchlight Launch Trailer: Torchlight Launch Trailer
Runic Games Video Page: http://www.youtube.com/user/runicgames
YouTube - Torchlight Official Game Trailer for PC [HD]: Torchlight official game trailer for PC [HD]